Book reviews and other musings from a bibliophile and self-proclaimed geek.

Sleuthing Sightseer

Traveling and experiencing what the world has to offer. It’s a lovely prospect, which can be either more or less enjoyable when it’s part of your job, depending on what you do and your perspective. In Chris Pavone’s The Travelers, writing for a travel magazine is a little more complicated than it might seem on the surface.

Will Rhodes writes for a magazine called Travelers and gets to travel around the world to gather information, experiences, and photos for his articles. During his travels, he meets a beautiful woman who causes him to compromise the fidelity of his marriage, spurring him into action to keep a secret larger than simply being unfaithful to his wife. Secrets build as Will continues to travel for the magazine and gather intelligence on the people he’s already meeting for work, at the request of a woman who he thinks might be working for the CIA. Getting drawn into a larger plot of international intrigue, Will’s choices determine the outcomes of many people’s lives.

While there’s undoubtedly an intricacy in writing a complex and compelling spy story, I found it rather frustrating to have the concept of spying so obliquely hinted at – to the point that it was blatantly obvious – throughout the narrative but not having it confirmed until the very end. There were a lot of various smaller story lines that worked toward the climax of the larger story, but it was a lot to juggle the various interludes of seemingly lesser important people; the execution of such an intricate matter of multiple people’s stories was lacking in its suspenseful finesse and had me waiting for the ultimate point to be made instead of thoroughly being immersed in and enjoying the story.